jdb
Guest
Figured I try my hand at a dive report.
This past Sunday we take off to our favorite shore dive spot. The one draw back to this site is the long walk down to the beach, about 300yards in soft sand. Usually once we reach our entry point we would relax on the beach for a while and give our legs a chance to rest, however Sunday was kinda cold and rainy ( air 69 degrees and water 66 degrees) so we decided to just head right in and just take the first dive slow and easy. We decide that I will lead the first dive because I had dove this site more than the other two. At somewhere around 2 minutes into the dive Jody calls the dive because of equipment problems. We all surface and decide that Chris and I will continue the dive while Jody works out the problems and will rejoin us on the next dive. Everything is going great, no other divers in the water to murk it up, fish all around us and 30' vis to boot. We reached our depth of 50' and hang out for a few minutes after which we decided to turn the dive and go see if Jody is all fixed up yet. I checked the compass, get a heading and off we go. At 45' we run into the current from H#!!. We guestimate the current to be somewhere around 2-4knts. I check my watch and it is just now supposed to be high tide. I look at my buddy to the left and slightly behind me and he is digging his hands into the sand and pulling himself along pretty effortlessly I figure, good idea and attempt this also, only it is not working for me. After about 3minutes of this and getting nowhere I notice that I am breathing way too hard, I look over to my buddy to signal him I had to rest just in time to see him lose his grip on the sand. At this point I remember thinking, how can a perfectly good dive go so bad so quick? I push up off the sand and catch up with Chris at which time I signal him to surface, we may have to get a ride back to shore but I am not fighting that current again. I am still very much out of breath and start to purge assist my breathing. At this point I am becoming disoriented and can only assume that we are in the boat channel by now, so I am working hard to keep our dive flag right on top of us, This is a popular fishing spot with many boats going in and out and the last thing I want is to end this dive by being run over by some boat. At 20ft I stop my assent for a safety stop only Chris keeps going up. Not a runaway assent but still he didn't stop at 20ft. When I was about to lose site of him I decided to cut my stop short seeing as how I didn't know exactly where we were by now. When we surface I was right, dead center of the channel and 400 yards from shore. We inflated the BC's rolled over and 30minutes latter we were back on land. ( I know we should have dropped down to 5 foot and swam but Chris was under weighted which is the reason he blew off his safety stop) Gave us plenty of time to recover though. Turns out that the tide chart I was using had daylight savings time off by one week. Its amazeing the difference
This past Sunday we take off to our favorite shore dive spot. The one draw back to this site is the long walk down to the beach, about 300yards in soft sand. Usually once we reach our entry point we would relax on the beach for a while and give our legs a chance to rest, however Sunday was kinda cold and rainy ( air 69 degrees and water 66 degrees) so we decided to just head right in and just take the first dive slow and easy. We decide that I will lead the first dive because I had dove this site more than the other two. At somewhere around 2 minutes into the dive Jody calls the dive because of equipment problems. We all surface and decide that Chris and I will continue the dive while Jody works out the problems and will rejoin us on the next dive. Everything is going great, no other divers in the water to murk it up, fish all around us and 30' vis to boot. We reached our depth of 50' and hang out for a few minutes after which we decided to turn the dive and go see if Jody is all fixed up yet. I checked the compass, get a heading and off we go. At 45' we run into the current from H#!!. We guestimate the current to be somewhere around 2-4knts. I check my watch and it is just now supposed to be high tide. I look at my buddy to the left and slightly behind me and he is digging his hands into the sand and pulling himself along pretty effortlessly I figure, good idea and attempt this also, only it is not working for me. After about 3minutes of this and getting nowhere I notice that I am breathing way too hard, I look over to my buddy to signal him I had to rest just in time to see him lose his grip on the sand. At this point I remember thinking, how can a perfectly good dive go so bad so quick? I push up off the sand and catch up with Chris at which time I signal him to surface, we may have to get a ride back to shore but I am not fighting that current again. I am still very much out of breath and start to purge assist my breathing. At this point I am becoming disoriented and can only assume that we are in the boat channel by now, so I am working hard to keep our dive flag right on top of us, This is a popular fishing spot with many boats going in and out and the last thing I want is to end this dive by being run over by some boat. At 20ft I stop my assent for a safety stop only Chris keeps going up. Not a runaway assent but still he didn't stop at 20ft. When I was about to lose site of him I decided to cut my stop short seeing as how I didn't know exactly where we were by now. When we surface I was right, dead center of the channel and 400 yards from shore. We inflated the BC's rolled over and 30minutes latter we were back on land. ( I know we should have dropped down to 5 foot and swam but Chris was under weighted which is the reason he blew off his safety stop) Gave us plenty of time to recover though. Turns out that the tide chart I was using had daylight savings time off by one week. Its amazeing the difference
